Lots of good comments (as always) after the essay at the pajamasmedia website.

Hanson is using "we" to generalize attitudes of the country that elected Obama and the Western world that was cheering for it. Please, Freepers, everybody knows that "we" as freepers are ahead of the curve.

Our entire society is propped up on lies. It's easy to see that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme which is doomed to eventual failure, but the fact is that almost everything about our society is just as tenuous. I just don't see how we avoid a huge crash and a transformation of values. Virtually everything we believe, is false. We have built our house on sand.

Hopefully when the rebuilding comes, there will be more appreciation for the Truth in the Bible. Let us build on rock next time.

6 posted on 02/08/2010 7:36:15 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
(I was born in America, but now I live in Declinistan.)

"sort of like the old demonstrations against Prop. 13 when protestors used to wave the flag of the country they did not wish to return to and trample the flag of the country they so eagerly wished to remain in."

Excellent article. I suspect that VDH meant to refer to Prop. 187 though. I don't remember these kinds of demonstration over the Property Tax issue.

5. What is going on with the rise of a leftist aristocracy? Al Gore become a multimillionaire railing about reducing our lifestyle in accord with the pseudoscience of his climate-change gurus? John Edwards built a mansion to better voice his sermons on "two nations"? From his estates, John Kerry limoed and jetted in Kennedy-fashion to warn us about a cruel jobless vision of George Bush's America?

A zillionaire Gates family, that has ensured there will be no federal inheritance taxes on their $50 billion, lectures on the benefits of higher inheritance taxes; a speculating Soros expounds on capitalism's sins; a billionaire, tax-savvy Buffet laments the too-low federal income tax; a multimillionaire, low-ratings Katie Couric bristles at Palinism as her network lays off hoi polloi. And on and on.

Yet rarely is voiced the common denominator. High Liberalism is now a psychological manifestation, by which the very rich, immune to both the realities of tough living and the hurt of high taxes, finds solace, self-worth, penance even, by sympathy for big government entitlement for the less fortunate whom they connive hourly to avoid. Prep schools are jammed with the children of those who damn charter schools and vouchers; environmentalism's most articulate advocates of small is better live in ways undreamed by the masses they wish to rein in. The greatest advocates of public expenditure, whether a Rangel, Geithner, or Daschle, are quite busy ensuring that they themselves will not have to pay for it all.

“High Liberalism is now a psychological manifestation, by which the very rich, immune to both the realities of tough living and the hurt of high taxes, finds solace, self-worth, penance even, by sympathy for big government entitlement for the less fortunate whom they connive hourly to avoid.”

The flip side of this is why are people not up in arms about the liberal rich? Hate the rich but don’t hate any movie stars, movie directors, musicians, sports stars, etc., who are all millionaires many times over. We can’t hate Brad Pitt or Angela Jolie. The public are told who amongst the rich to hate: Republicans. The public can go f*ck themselves, if they haven’t already.

[High Liberalism is now a psychological manifestation, by which the very rich, ]

"The result? The result you can see -- most of the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can't get rid of to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words [for] these people the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible."

It's because totalitarian socialism is a conspiracy and method of and by the Illuminati to control, impoverish, dumb down, bankrupt, and enslave the masses. Obama is the puppet of the secret societies who want to impose this agenda. For some strange reason they like the yahoos like Edwards, Clinton, and Gore as their front men and mouthpieces. Probably because they are too stupid to understand the more sinister occult and gnostic aspects of this agenda. Or too immoral, vainglorious, and power-hungry to care.

"Most of us believe socialism is what the socialists want us to believe it is - a share-the-wealth program. That is the theory. But is that how it works?... If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite." - Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy